


Kidnapping 101

by BromeliadLucy



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A bit of a farce!, Minor Violence, bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 18:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7725757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BromeliadLucy/pseuds/BromeliadLucy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case of mistaken identity and some inept Hydra trainees don't make for the most successful kidnap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kidnapping 101

**Author's Note:**

> Just something ridiculous that popped into my head!

Kidnapping 101

A case of mistaken identity by some poorly trained Hydra agents.

\--

 

You weren’t supposed to be here. This was not in your calendar for today and you hated unscheduled meetings. You were pretty sure this kind of work wasn’t mentioned in your job description from Stark Industries either. And you had no idea if you could claim expenses for this – how would you code ‘damaged by Hydra during torture’ on the finance system...?

It was possible you were getting a little delirious.

\---

Earlier

You were the third person to find out that Pepper was pregnant, after her doctor and Tony. You weren't technically supposed to know, but after the second time you'd gone to look for her when she was late for a meeting, only to find her throwing up in her office's private bathroom, she took you into her confidence.

You'd been working with her for over a year now and right up until this moment you'd have said you were confident in your abilities. You had a law degree, you had a Masters in Business Administration, you had experience, but right now you felt as if you were the lowliest work experience kid, dressed in your Mom's too big clothes and about to cry.

Pepper was due in a big meeting, right now, and instead she was lying on her bathroom floor, a mess. You'd accompanied her to all the previous meetings and knew the situation inside out but now she'd asked you to go cover for her. Alone.

It should be simple, right? It was a meeting about some new tech that another organisation wanted to link up with Stark on. Most of the details had been thrashed out, this was mostly just a show-around, glad-handing type, with a little bit of legal wrangling over croissants and fake smiles. You’d have a couple of legal assistants with you, you just had to not promise anything while sounding as if you were agreeing to all they said.

So, you grabbed documents, iPad, pen, paper. Straightened your skirt, brushed your hair off your face, plastered on a smile of fake confidence and hoped you didn’t make a deal that ended up bringing down the firm.

Of course, as it turned out, that might have been preferable. You’d entered the room, shaking hands and smiling and thanking them for coming, surprised rather at the amount of muscle in the room – you were used to the Avengers and their multitude of biceps and abs, but you didn’t usually see it in business meetings. Still, healthy lifestyles were obviously catching on. You offered coffee but head Muscleman (shit, you hadn’t caught his name. In fact, you hadn’t even introduced yourself. Too late now, nod and smile nod and smile) wanted to look around, his Muscleminions nodding in agreement. So you set off, chatting inanely, leaving the assistants to set up the paperwork. Mr Muscle asked to start the tour at the top, saying he’d heard the view from the top of Stark Tower was amazing, so you all squeezed into an elevator and headed up. You tried making small talk with one of the minions, a woman standing next to you but she looked at you pretty blankly and you decided that most of these suits were obviously here to make up the numbers, to impress Pepper.

“So, we’re as high as we can go now, as you can see New York does look pretty good from up here! As new business partners, you will of course be invited to Mr. Stark’s regular parties up…. HEY, what the…. Mmmmmffffff!”

Ms Muscleminion had grabbed you from behind and now had her hand clamped over your mouth. You kicked and struggled but there were far more of them than you, and suddenly one of the others was approaching, needle in hand.

“Hail Hydra” he said, as he stabbed the needle into your thigh. You heard the sound of a helicopter approaching and everything went dark.

\---

Next thing you knew, you were in a stereotypical evildoers’ lair. Honestly, you’d think Hydra could afford something other than underground-car-park chic or the abandoned-warehouse-aesthetic. Hysteria was setting in apparently. You were tied to a chair and had a feeling that bad things were going to happen. Yeah, this was definitely not on your ‘to do’ list for today. 

You were starting to feel uncomfortable. Your head ached from whatever drug they’d given you, your arms and legs were hurting from being held in one position, you were thirsty and you were seriously pissed off. There was a reason that you were called SheHulk on occasion; you were known for your temper.

The door opened and the man from the business meeting entered again. He pulled up a chair near you, scraping the metal across the floor. Presumably this was supposed to menace you but you rolled your eyes at the cliché.

“So, Ms Potts, I assume you’re intelligent to understand you are now our hostage. Mr Stark will, I’m sure, provide us with whatever we desire, to ensure your safe return.” He grinned at you, and you couldn’t help but grin back. Oh god, they thought you were Pepper, this was hysterical (OK, maybe it wasn’t, but you weren’t thinking straight). You remembered realising you’d forgotten to introduce yourself in your nerves about the meeting. And they weren’t the first to make the mistake – even Tony had groped you by accident from behind at a party once, you and Pepper had identical hair after all. And they had been expecting Pepper… You opened your mouth to correct him then gulped and shut it hurriedly. They were not going to keep some assistant alive and healthy when they realised their mistake. You were going to need to play along.

“Tony doesn’t bargain with Hydra.” You eyed the man as your aching brain tried to think about what Pepper would do, what you should do, what they’d do…

“Oh I think he will when he sees what we’re capable of, Ms Potts.” He grinned again and suddenly you weren’t feeling like grinning again.

A couple of his goons set up a laptop, its webcam aimed at you. That little part of your brain that was in hysterical mode wanted to ask what the wi-fi reception was like under all this concrete but luckily the rest of your brain was too busy panicking to listen.

All turned on and set up, you could see yourself on the laptop screen. You didn’t look great to be honest, they obviously hadn’t been too gentle carrying your unconscious body; there were scrapes across your face, dirty marks on your suit and your hair – Pepper’s hair – was every which way.

“Mr Stark, as you can see, we have Ms Potts. She is well… for now. That can change. You will find a list of our requirements at the end of this broadcast, along with details for how to contact us. You have one hour.”

You knew you needed to get Tony to play along when he saw this, not let on that you weren’t Pepper, so before they turned off the recording, you quickly spoke.

“Tony, it’s Pep here. Who knew Hydra would want to kidnap Pepper Potts, right…?” That was all you had time for before a resounding slap around the side of your head silenced you. You bit your tongue as your head snapped sideways and the real fear started.

The three Hydra agents picked up the laptop and moved away from you, talking. You listened as hard as you could to their conversation.

“So what do we do? Email it?”

“No, he can trace the signal. Put it on a DVD?”

“What and post it?”

“No, idiot, that’ll take forever. Get a messenger. You do know how to burn a DVD?”

“I can google it…”

Oh. My. God. Apparently you’d been kidnapped by the least competent bad guys ever. Were they… trainees?! How humiliating!

“Look, we have to get this right, go get the DVD sorted, we have to be quick.”

“Yeah, does the one-hour deadline start from when we stopped recording or when he sees it? I mean, what if he doesn’t watch the DVD!?”

Great. Were you going to have to give them Kidnapping 101 just so they could get this right?!

“We’ve got to get that tech before the weekend. Once the General is back, we have to have something to show him or else he’s going to skin us!”

You are kidding, right. This wasn’t just a Kidnapping by Kids, it was unauthorised? What, they were trying to get extra credit on their Hydra Degrees by being proactive? You let out a groan and let your head drop, drawing their attention to you. They shifted and all headed out of the room, presumably to choose their favourite fonts for the ransom note. Jeez, I bet they wrote it in Comic Sans.

Once they’d gone, you were still in the same position. Tied up, uncomfortable, ear ringing still from the slap and the iron taste of blood in your mouth. To be honest, you also needed to use the bathroom, which did not put you in a better frame of mind.

They left you there for what felt like hours, while you wriggled your arms and legs inside their bonds in an attempt to get free. You could feel the bonds loosening – presumably they’d never got their ‘knot tying’ girl scout badge – but when the door opened again you felt yourself tensing up.

“He hasn’t responded. Why hasn’t he responded?!” The larger man put his face close to yours as he shouted and you could see the anger and anxiety in his face. A dangerous combination, he had a lot to prove it seemed and you were the material he had to prove himself on

The laptop was set up again and the man stood behind you, grabbing your hair tight in his fist and yanking your head back. You let out a gasp of pain.

“Mr Stark. Do you really value your fiancée’s life so little? Would you like her returned piece by piece? You have the phone number you need, ring us within an hour of receiving this, unless you enjoy seeing your Ms Potts suffer”

At that, things took a turn for the serious, as the woman from the lift stepped forward and punched you in the stomach. You jerked forward involuntarily, but yelled out as the grip on your hair tightened. Unable to lean forward to relieve the pain, you gasped, winded. The SheHulk was released however and you started shouting.

“You piece of shit, you fuckers, Tony, blow this whole place up I don’t care!” You shook side to side in your chair, trying to loosen your bonds further, but another blow to your stomach left you unable to breathe again and dizzy from pain. 

The Hydra agents gathered up their things and left again.

The next time they appeared, after another agonising wait, you had regained your breath but not your temper. Your stomach ached and you were running on adrenaline. You’d managed to work all bar one of your bonds loose and were just working on the last when they reappeared.

“Mr Stark wants more proof that you are alive”. A phone was pressed against your ear.

“‘Pepper’, that you? Can you keep talking for a bit…?”

“Tony darling, I’m cold and sore in this damn underground bunker and I am going to claim so much damn overtime…”

“Enough.” The phone was taken away from your ear. That probably wasn’t enough to trace a call but it depended on how long Tony had been talking to the Hydra idiot before you and how long they talked now. 

“You have our list Mr Stark, and the location for the drop… I don’t care if you don’t have all the components, you have to find them… Well I said one hour! Ok fine, two. OK FINE, THREE. You have three hours that should be more than sufficient to gather things from your other base. No you can’t talk to her again. No. Just shut up! OK fine!”

The phone was held up against your ear again.

“You doing OK kid? This’ll all be over soon. Sooner than they may expect. Just don’t do anything stupid OK?”

“How can I, they’ve got all the stupid here” You grinned. ‘Sooner than they may expect’ made you think they were on their way.

The phone call was cut off and the man backhanded you across the face, probably for your rudeness. You spat out blood at him and he saw red. Perhaps he could sense this slipping away from him – kidnappers generally didn’t end up conceding so much to their victims, but Tony was good at that.

He went to punch you again but at that point, you really did hulk out. You pulled your arms and legs free from the loosened bonds just as he lunged forwards, and threw yourself sideways. Your legs nearly gave way after being tied up for so long, so you grabbed at the chair for support, then when he came at you with a roar, threw it at his face, stamping your feet and shaking your arms to get the feeling back, and regretting it as the pins and needles started. That just threw you into an even worse mood.

“I. Fucking. Hate. Pins and Needles. You bastard!”. As heroic lines go, it probably needed work, but your adrenaline was racing and your heart was pounding and you were furious. You threw yourself down as he ran at you again, knocking his legs out from under him, then pummelling his face before rolling him over and yanking his arms up behind him.

“Did you really think anyone working with Stark didn’t get to train with the Avengers, you MORON?”

You grabbed at the rope that had tied you to the chair and had him hog-tied within seconds, just in time as the other two came in the door and saw what you were doing. Your blood was up and your legs were working now and it was no great effort to take down two poorly trained and obviously low level Hydra fools, not when you had compulsory training with Captain America and Black Widow three times a week.

“THIS WASN’T ON MY SCHEDULE!!” You shouted as your arms blurred with the speed of your punches. Even with the two of them attacking you, it was no great effort and within a few minutes both were lying on the ground groaning. You panted hard, then looked up at the sound of applause.

Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson were all leaning against the wall near the door, watching you and clapping.

“You bastards!” You panted, hands on knees. “You couldn’t have joined in?”

“Oh you looked like you were having way too much fun, ‘Pepper’. I know you hate it when I interfere in your business meetings.” The men walked towards you as Stark spoke, Rogers reaching you first and holding you up. Despite the sarcasm, you could see the concern on their faces at what you might have been through.

You leant on Tony heavily as you left the room, leaving Sam and Steve to gather up – and laugh at – the Hydra idiots, kidnapping the wrong person and then getting taken down three against one.

Tony hugged you to him and whispered thanks against your hair.

“You owe me Stark. Overtime, a corner office, and…”

“Some more time off?”

“No, you can call the damn baby after me”


End file.
